Exploring the Relationship between EFL Proficiency Level and Reading Strategy Use

When students in Taiwan enter into higher education, the reading demands placed upon them often lead them to select ineffective and inefficient strategies with little strategic intent. To investigate how reading strategy use affects the development of Taiwanese EFL learners’ reading comprehension, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship and differences of four reading strategy uses (cognitive, metacognitive, compensatory, and testing strategies) between EFL readers with different proficiency levels on their reading outcomes. Based on the purpose of the present study, three main research questions were addressed: (1) What is the most frequent use of reading strategy reported by individual students? (2) Is there any significant relationship between students’ self-reported reading strategy use and English reading performance? (3) What is the difference existing between EFL proficiency level and reading strategy use? Results of the study showed that students frequently employed various reading strategies in English reading process. Readers with the high proficiency level particularly used more testing strategies than readers with the low proficiency level to reach a higher level of reading comprehension performance. Implications of these findings for implementing effective reading strategy instruction in a Taiwanese EFL context are discussed.